These talks will be self-contained presentations of mathematical concepts and theorems. They are intended to be accessible to all mathematics students.
 
 

The human race is believed to have acquired the power of speech more than 50,000 years ago. How they did so can only be a matter of speculation. Archaeological evidence of extensive trade routes in Europe during the late Stone Ages suggests that some people then were capable of understanding (large) integers prior to the emergence of general number systems in various ancient civilizations. How they did so is a matter of speculation. One such speculation will be presented in this talk and supported by numerous examples of ancient counting systems, a few of which have survived nearly to the present day. A mathematical (and computational) description of many of these systems goes beyond the notion of "expanding an integer n to a (constant) base b". As time permits, a notion of "variable base" will be introduced and discussed.